Bogieblog

Cleo

I didn't mean to get another cat. I certainly didn't mean to get a cat that was 5 months old and used to having a house entirely by herself. But mean to or not, I did.

About a year after I got Shadow, and he had firmly established himself as the 4th dog in the family (he would go "out" with the dogs, he would go up to the pen with the dogs (although he didn't stay in the pen), he was raised with three dogs and in fact, believed himself to be a dog), a co-worker started complaining that he had to get rid of his cat. I asked why and his reply was that the cat was to darned energetic.

I knew how old the cat was because he had gotten it from a litter that another co-worker's cat had had. I asked Brian, the co-worker, what he expected out of a kitten. "But, she is just too hyper," he grumbled. Brian should not have gotten a cat in the first place; he was rarely home, so of course the cat was frantic for attention when he was there.

After a couple of weeks, Brian said he ws going to have to take the cat to a shelter. I asked why and Brian said because he couldn't find anyone to take it.

This is where I got caught. I was pretty sure the shelter would put the cat down. i knew several people that had gotten a kitten from the same litter, and every one of them had tested positive for feline leukemia. Shelters will not even think about harboring a cat with that disease. However, there was always the posibility that the cat didn't have the disease - after all, the mother's owners insisted that the mother had been tested and came out clean.

Anyway, I told Brian not to do anything until I talked to the Wonderful Spouse.

Melded Together

As I was on a gardening forum that I lurk on, I was scrolling down the various titles people had given their posts to see if anything interested me. As I was reading, I was unconsiously combining titles, and some of the combos were pretty funny (to me anyway). These combinations were in the cooking and craft section:

• Need to find old german . .  Garlic Soup

• Any Knitters . . . Coloring Soaps

• Bannana Bread . . . Essential oils?

• Home made Maple Nut Ice Cream . . . Looking for Blackberry Wine

• WANTED: Really Good Southern Style Cornbread . . . meatball sauce

• Soup recipes . . . want to learn . . . Recipe for sugar snaps

• Too Many Peppers . . . Sewing

I really enjoyed the fourth one!

A Little Late

Apparently the state goofed when it closed the Deering bridge February 15. It should have been closed last October!

Download deering_bridge.doc

The link will open up a word document (I don't know how long it will take to download since I have never done that on this site before). The document of the images scanned of the article from The Feb 23, 2006 edition of the NH Contender.

UPDATE: Seems the file will take a while to download, even with a broadband connection.

Space Objects

There's a new comet out there and it is supposed to be visible to the naked eye. Fortunately, it is supposed to visible during the time I drive to work. Since I can see Venus, I should be able to see the comet (Venus is used as a marker in the sky).

Short Takes

License plate seen on a Nissan Frontier: STRTREK - heh.

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I finally got someone to take my money today so we could have some pudding (ie, I was actually able to buy meat).

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WS has not been able to ride his new sled this year. We did get snow yesterday, but only 5-6". That is all we have gotten at a wack since the beginning of the year and it has always warmed up so most of it has melted by the time we have another snow storm.

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Of course this weekend we have about a million birds at the feeders. Not really, we have the normal amount of birds, but the last two weekends we have had less than the norm. That is because the last two weekends were bird-count weekends. Now the shy ones have come back out of hiding.

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You would think people in NH could drive in a couple of inches of snow. Apparently not, and there was a 50 car pileup to prove it.

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I have watched as much of the olympics as possible, even staying up late some nights to watch. The coverage seems abysmal to me. If I stay up until 11PM, then I expect to see some of the favorites for medal contention. Instead, apparently only 2nd shifters got to see that - after they got home from work. Hey, but we could watch all the curling we wanted; that is all that played on one station  6-8PM, every night for about 10 days!

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That's it for today, hope everyone is having a good weekend!

We're Gonna Starve

I have had to leave groceries at the store twice this week. I have literally gone to a store, chosen my items, gone to check out, not been able to check out, and left everything at the counter.

Monday, WS went into Concord so he could do a few things at work (Monday was a holiday for both of us). Since he needed my help, I went along with him. We decided to stop at Sam's club since we would be in the neighborhood. We got what we needed, including meat for the week, and unloaded the cart at the register. Upon seeing my debit card in my hand, the cashier said their debit system was down. Well, I don't carry a checkbook and Sam's doesn't accept credit cards, so I told the guy that we wouldn't be buying anything that day.

Last night, on my way home, I stopped at Walmart to get a few things. I was able to get my stuff there, but then I went down the road to Shaws to get meat for the week (I refuse to buy meat at Walmart because I refuse to pay for 11% broth - and it just makes the meat look sick anyway). Anyway, I picked out chicken, boneless pork ribs, hamburger and stew meat. All the regular registers were really backed up so I went to the do-it-yourself register (I still think I should get a discount when I do all the work).

So I get half way thru ringing stuff up, when the computer tells me that there is an "unexpected item in the baggage area". So I take the item off and then it says that "an item has been removed from the baggage area, please replace it before continuing". I replace it and we go back to the unexpected item bit. I have been caught in this loop before and it will not allow you to go on until an associate tells it everything is okeydokey. There were no associates assigned to watch the self checkouts (even though all 4 were being used) and I couldn't get anyone's attention. After a couple of minutes I decided I didn't want any of it that badly.

I walked out leaving the stuff right there.

I guess we are destined to live the week meatless!

Reclaimation

I spent Wednesday and Thursday in Rhode Island. Okay, that isn't exactly true, I spent 6 hours each day in Rhode Island, and spent 6 hours each day driving (to work, to Rhode Island, back to NH).

I had not planned on doing this. It was not on my itinerary - in any way shape or form. However, when the Vice President Asks you (at 3:45 PM on Tuesday mind you), "How would you like to learn how gold reclamation is done and document it?", you know it isn't a question, but a cleverly worded command.

"Sure, that would be interesting," I reply then am told that it is scheduled for the next day. Someone else usually does this, but he is busy - and apparently I am not busy enough. This is all Company R's fault for making me stay late on Tuesday. They were auditing us, and I was called in in the afternoon to discuss documentation, corrective actions, training and calibration with them. If they had not been there, I would have been gone before the VP caught me.

Credit Card Dump

Ever call to cancell a credit card? If you have, you have probably gone thru the scare tactics that probably keep some people from cancelling.

In October I received a renewal credit card. I only have 2 credit cards to begin with, and that one is almost never used. I haven't even activated the renewal card yet so decided just to cancel it. I called and told the "advisor" that I wanted to cancel. "John" (the actual name he gave me - who knows if that is real) gave me all the reasons and benefits that I should keep my card. Hey, there is 0% interest for 6 months. There is a 3.9% fixed interest rate for life etc. etc.

He asked me why I wanted to cancel and I told him that I never use it. "That's not true, you used it only a couple of months ago," he excaimed. "No," I corrected him, "I used it last May for a $30 purchase and that was just to keep it active. I only ever use it once a year for some small purchase, just to keep it active."

"But you've had this card for, . . . Wow! 14 Years. Now I know most financial advisors say to cancel some credit cards, but even financial advisors will tell you to keep your old credit cards and cancel the new ones. That is because the old credit cards are a history of your credit. Now, you don't want to lose the history of your credit do you?"

"Look, John, I've owned a house for 18 years. If they can't figure out my credit from that, then they are too stupid to deserve my business."

"Oh, house payments don't really show your credit record," John said, then with an ominous voice he continued, "But, I've just cancelled your account. Now you've just lost 14 years of credit history, It's gone, poof just like that after the cancellation . . . . "

I didn't stick around to hear the rest of his spiel, I said "Thanks, Bye." and hung up. He was still talking when I hit the "Off" button. I'm sure if I had stuck around that he would have confided that he could probably get it back (and gee, "I'm not supposed to, but you are such a good customer") blah, blah, blah.

I wonder how many people fall for the truckload of crap he was trying to sell me. I wonder what John would have rebutted with if I had told him that was my youngest credit card (the other being 15 years old). I wonder what his commission would have been if I had decided not to cancel (not much, I'll bet, since they haven't made any money off of me).

Gosh, all kinds of questions I will never know the answer to.

We're In Good Shape

It turns out that we are the lucky ones; we only lost power for 3 hours on Friday. Some friends that live in Henniker, and whom we visited on Friday night, still have no power (yes, we visited them while they had no power and used flashlights/candles to see). They have a woodstove, so can keep the house warn. But, like 33% of the households in this state, they are on a well for water. No electricity, no water pump, no water. They came over last night and she took a shower before settling down to visit with HandH, Jim and Karen (we had a houseful last night). Then they filled a bunch of water bottles to take home.

We also realized that the other end of our street has no power. The other end starts past the trailer that is the next house down, and on the opposite side of the street from us (after that, the power comes in from the other direction). Usually we can see porch lights and such at night, but that side is dark. The first clue was that WS and Jimmy (who was here all of yesterday) said that they thought they heard a generator. The hills and trees do funny things to sound, so you can never be sure from where it is coming. WS thought it was coming from a large farm at the top of the hill down the street (I know that sounds weird, but "up" the street is taking a left out the driveway and "down" the street is taking a right out the driveway). That house is approximately 1/2 way between us and the end of our road.

As I came home from getting pizza for the crowd of people we were hosting, I looked up the ridge and determined that the generator is most likely from an older, and smaller, farm where maple syrup is made. It is about 7/8 of the way between us and the end of the road. They had some lights going, but the rest of the ridge is dark, which means that Clement Hill doesn't have power either. We also know that Bear Hill road in Hilsboro is still closed (we normally take that road to Henniker when we see the aforementioned friends, but it was closed on Friday night too).

PSH crews are working around the clock to restore power. Tree cutting services are also out in force; we saw a convoy of tree cutters when we were in town yesterday morning, and I witnessed a convoy of electrical workers when I went to get pizza last night.  The temps yesterday were in the high teens and at this time it is 4 degrees - but at least the winds finally calmed down late last night.

Hopefully people have found a warm place to stay, or have woodstoves to stave off the cold!

Powerful Winds

We had some big winds yesterday (still going pretty good this morning too). At work, we had several power flickers at work around noon. Shortly thereafter, a gal who lives in Francestown, a town abutting Deering, emailed me that Francestown's power was out (her husband had called her on a cell phone) and asked about ours. I called home and the answering machine picked up, so I knew at that point we had power.

Then at 2:40 , the power at work went went completely out. I didn't mind too much. I had planned on getting out at 2 (by noon I had 45 hours in), but at 1:15 someone brought me a pile of work that needed to be done. I got it all done except 2 things when the power failure hit. I figured that was a message from God and got out about 2:50 (power still wasn't restored).

The traffic lights at the closest intersection weren't working, but everyone seemed to be playing nice (there wasn't too much traffic yet anyway). The next set of lights, about 4 miles away, were working, so at least the whole town of Hollis wasn't affected.

On my drive home, I had to stop once because the road was down to one lane. A tree hadn't so much fallen as it was leaning precariously over the other lane, and only about 10 feet above the road. Another road had a detour while crews were doing electrical work.

I stopped at the Deering General store to get some PowerBall tickets and asked the gal at the counter if they had had power flickers. She said that they had just gotten power back.

When I got home and had parked in the driveway, I walked back down to the street and threw several large branches out of the road. On getting my stuff out of the truck, I found a huge scratch down the passengers door (it either happened at work or while I was driving home) and heard trees cracking all around me as another huge gust came barreling thru (it was neat hearing the gust get closer and closer before it finally hit).